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Welcome to the official Square Foot Gardening Forum.
There's lots to learn here by reading as a guest. However, if you become a member (it's free, ad free and spam-free) you'll have access to our large vermiculite databases, our seed exchange spreadsheets, Mel's Mix calculator, and many more members' pictures in the Gallery. Enjoy.

Good morning! I am new to the forum and excited to learn more. I've been reading some of the past posts and I can tell this is going to be a lot of fun. Thank you to those that have already welcomed me since I jumped the gun and didn't introduce myself in the proper place.

I've been growing my own veggies in the Fresno area for the past 4 years with some success, but really need to step up my game. I do everything organically. My definition of that is no fertilizers. I'm not a health nut, just don't like chemicals. This is an area I could really use some help with. Also, figure out the right time to start seeds. I'm a procrastinator so if I had some schedule it might help. I said might.

Last year I had 20 tomato plants (and I don't even like tomatoes), 6 bellpepper plants, lots of different herbs, hot peppers and some other things I can't think of at the moment.

I will be taking the certification online soon (thank you Sanderson). Any suggestions?

Ok I will stop my rambling. Did I mention how excited I am to be here?

Hello , welcome to the site. For threads on making your initial Mel's Mix for starting up & home made composts to use in place of artificial fertilizers .... go to the home page , look to the left hand side for a thin brownish vertical bobbly line and mouse it ...... loads of thread titles will appear have a feast reading them through . Composting 101 is especially good so is the " Berkeley 18 day hot composting method " if you're fit enough to turn the compost heap as directed by that system.

This whole site is well worth reading from thread No 1 post no 1 , it took me a few weeks , I've found it was a sound investment of my time.

In my strap lines I show the latest books that we use as our guide to " All New Square Foot Gardening " . You'll have a good garden if you carefully follow the making recipe for " Mel's Mix " , don't follow the recipe and your end results won't normally be anywhere near as good for your first season of growing . Thereafter you continually make you own composts and replenish each square with a trowel full of your own home made compost after you have harvested it .

I assume by saying you do everything organically so you don't use fertilizers, you mean you don't use artificial ones. Good old compost is as organic as it gets, at least the stuff you make yourself, and plants adore it. Plus it's a good way to get rid of waste in an environmentally responsible and even helpful way rather than having it carted off to take up space in a dump.

So I hope you get into making your own compost. It fits right in with the SFG method and almost every other home gardening method.

Barb, Can you post photos of your non-SFG garden? It will be fun for us to watch your journey as you start SFG.I'll be starting some seedlings indoor in February. I'm not rushing it this year because last year I started in January and I lost a lot of seedlings by putting them out in the cold beds too early.

So I went outside today since I thought I saw the sun coming out. I did get a few pics to show my simple garden. We moved in just over a year ago. Had lots of remodeling inside so the garden hasn't gotten my full attention. Right now I am growing artichoke, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and lettuce. I got a late start since it was holiday party central at our house from Halloween until New Years. Now to get serious about the spring.!

The first picture is on the west side of my back yard toward the north end.

The second picture is of my potting bench and two larger beds on the south side of the house. Much cooler and great for lettuce.

The third picture is on the west side of the yard as well, but toward the south end.

As I mentioned, we just moved in a year ago and did a big remodel so I haven't had much time for the garden. We painted the outside of the boxes to add some color since it is a sea of green with the fence and lawn. I also painted a few clay pots. My mom was a flower lover and had 50 or more pots with flowers all over their deck and patio. My dad was going to throw them away so I hauled as many as I could home. I'm not quite sure what I will do with all of them since they are on the smaller side for planting veggies, but I'm sure I will come up with something

Okay, so now you have seen my simple garden. Feel free to share any tips, pointers, ask questions or whatever. I look forward to it!

I have plenty of room but little or knowledge. Or maybe it's just too cold! I've got some reading to do before I get started composting. I want to make sure my neighbors won't hate me if I don't do it right and create a stinky pile.

Good eye on the Margaret Hudson pot. It was a Mother's Day gift to my mom about 10 years ago. It was my favorite pot of all the ones I brought from her house.

I want to get rid of some of the lawn this year creating more garden. Not sure it will all happen this year but soon!

Just a comment about your lawn. It looks sparse, so when you mow it, leave the clippings on the lawn and do not put them on the compost heap.

My lawn looked like that for years, then I decided to mow often and as high as my lawnmower would allow, and without the grass-catcher bag, and now my lawn is soft and green and I can walk on it in bare feet. It took two years to improve, but it is worth it. It stands the dry season well, and I never water it. Eventually a lot more of it will be converted to beds, but meanwhile I have the pleasure of a lovely green lawn, with all sorts of wild flowers in it, violet, clover, etc. that bees and insects love.Meanwhile most of my neighbours scalp their lawns, fertilize and over-water them and they turn brown in the summer in spite of their efforts.